World Trending To Hit 50% Renewables, 11% Coal By 2050: Report (arstechnica.com)

Bloomberg New Energy Finance released a new report this week that estimates how electricity generation will change out to 2050. ArsTechnica: The clean energy analysis firm estimates that in a mere 33 years, the world will generate almost 50 percent of its electricity from renewable energy, and coal will make up just 11 percent of the total electricity mix. Add in hydroelectric power and nuclear energy, and greenhouse-gas-free electricity sources climb to 71 percent of the world's total electricity generation. The report doesn't offer a terribly bright future for nuclear, however, and after a period of contraction, the nuclear industry's contribution to electricity generation is expected to level off. Instead, falling photovoltaic (PV), wind, and battery costs will cause the dramatic shift in investment, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) notes. "PV and wind are already cheaper than building new large-scale coal or gas plants," the 2018 report says. In addition, BNEF expects that more than $500 billion will be invested in batteries by 2050, with two-thirds of that investment going to installations on the grid and one-third of that investment happening at a residential level.

Comments

Re:Never taken into account by alarmists

[omnichad]

This is just electricity. Industrialization is still increasing globally and I'm not sure CO2 generation has gone down overall. Coal is burned directly for smelting and there is still a lot of oil and natural gas powering cars and heating homes directly.

Re:Read the souce

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Not to even mention that solar doesn't scale all that well, because there are too many regions where there isn't enough sun

Actually, solar power is the most equally distributed power there is. You won't find ANY region (not a hole in the ground) in the world where there is, say, less than four times the maximum global insolation of ~2700 kWh/m^2. So even the worst place is less four times worse than the best one. Compared to this, even wind variations are much higher. And fossil fuel sites are even more unevenly distributed.